


The Twelfth Member

by Istelle



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: 12th member, Gen, How Do I Tag, Hunter Exam (Hunter X Hunter), My First Fanfic, My First Work in This Fandom, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tag As I Go, The Phantom Troupe, my chapters are too short help, sorry for bad writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28112319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istelle/pseuds/Istelle
Summary: "Does trust mean anything to you? You knew from the beginning, so why wait until now?"Trust? What did that even mean anymore, there was no point to this, this needless revenge. But she knew there was no time for this, she needed to leave now before they lose another member."That is a far too complicated question Kurapika, especially for a situation like this. You all thought you knew me and you didn't. That is the simple truth".--------------------------------------------------------The events of Hunter X Hunter with my original character added, and her impact on the story.
Kudos: 4





	1. The Desolate City

The wind blew stronger today, stronger then it had in a long time. Almost as if it was trying to tell her something, something she was already fully aware of.  
Akari Kita lay there on the dilapidated mattress that sat on the rusty bed frame, that had been discarded like many other things in Meteor City, or as many other people who come into the city seem to see it a dump to drop off things that had been hanging around you for too long. She knew she needed to get up soon, the exam was supposed to be that very morning. Already feeling the dawn’s rays shine on her as she sat up, Akari could tell that today was going to be different. She didn’t know why, but something felt off but in a strangely good way.  
Her white robe felt heavy on her as she got up from the bed, it covered her from head to toe masking her from the wind that brought endless sand to where she lay.  
“I guess it's about time I took this old thing off” Akari muttered to herself. She ripped it off from over her head, revealing her black, spider tattoo. It was etched on her right side, dipping inwards on the grooves of her muscles. The number twelve was there, in big writing, almost proudly displayed. She placed her hand on top of her tattoo, being slowly reminded of what she had to hide.  
Akari quickly changed out of her white cropped top into a longer one to cover her tattoo, she didn't want to take any risks. Akari thought it was probably time to leave, she didn’t know the process or length of the exam but she hoped it didn't last long enough that she’d be gone for weeks.  
It was one exam, to get a license to make missions easier. That was it. None of the other members were taking it, she thought. Would this be it, forever? Was she tied to this group for the rest of her days? She didn’t know whether that made her want to jump for joy or throw up all her guts in the sand.  
Maybe I should stop being so dramatic and get this over with, nothing eventful will happen, it never does , Akari thought.  
Akari thought.


	2. A New Setting

When it came to looks, Akari did in fact stand out. Picking up the dusty, cracked mirror from a pile of dumped items near the bed where she sat, Akari glared at her reflection.  
It was quite hard for her to go unnoticed, with her purple, shoulder length hair with a few small plaits thrown in here and there; one behind her right ear, another waving around near her right eye. The hair wasn’t the only problem though, and Akari soon came to this realization when she looked at her scowling face in the mirror.   
Her deep, purple eyes bore back at her as if she was trying to threaten herself, it was a habit of Akari’s, always had been.   
“Yeah, getting noticed is not something I want. Especially if any of them are there” she said aloud to herself.   
She got up from the bed once again and grimaced, her jeans were as tight as ever and it took a toll, especially on her knees.   
“Don’t you think it’s about time you leave Akari?”. Akari heard the voice to her left and didn’t need to look to see who it was. She was in the middle of putting on her jacket, it was black with a strip of purple fabric on its back creating a divide in the middle and coming to a crossroads when it neared the top.   
Akari sighed and looked over at the short, black haired girl with her black rimmed glasses who looked up at her with a curious expression.   
“Shizuku, you know you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that, especially in this place”, Akari says while she slings her belt around her waist, she slides her katana that was lying on the bed into the sheath attached to the belt.  
Shizuku was wearing her usual outfit, denim jeans, a black top and a gold cross necklace, with the added robe to shield her from the contaminated air.   
“Sneak up on you? I’ve been here the past ten minutes did you not see me?”.   
Akari realised in that moment that she should probably try not to space out as much.   
“Oh, oh yes of course! I was just...making a point?” Akari cringed at her own words, “But yes you’re right, I should really get going. The walk from here to actual civilization will take a while plus I hardly know where the exam is”. Akari talked while she started to walk away from the old bed frame that had been her temporary home. Shizuku walked with her.  
“So Shizu, are you staying home?”, Akari asks with a slight smile. It had been a while since she’d seen Shizuku, it had been a while since she’d seen any of the other members really. They hardly ever came home anymore and the boss hadn’t called a job that involved all of them in a long time.   
Shizuku raised her right index finger to tap her chin in a carefree manner, “Hmmm maybe. There are a few people here who need to be taken out according to the Assembly of Elders, since they did take from us”.   
Akari signed once more as she neared the exit of Meteor City, “Ah that does sound fun, I wish I could join you but duty calls I guess”.   
I guess Meteor City’s motto really does apply to everything huh, Akari thought as she looked over at Shizuku.   
Shizuku turns to face Akari when they stop walking once they’ve reached the exit.  
“You know you don’t need a Hunter’s License right? It’s not like you need it to do jobs for the boss, it’s not a requirement”   
“I know, it’s just….there’ll be more access to resources I guess? Plus if I do get my license it’ll be a serious drop in the amount of money that comes out of my wallet! Don’t you think?”   
“Yes, I suppose. You should be on your way, I’ll see you again Akari”  
“Yeah, see you Shizu”.  
Shizuku starts to head back into Meteor City as Akari starts the long walk out of it.   
She adjusted her belt and held onto the handle of her katana as she walked. It was purple, of course to match her look and her ability.   
The Hunter exam would probably be long, and possibly hard was what rang through Akari’s mind as she walked along the strip of what seemed like endless sand.   
She laughed suddenly, loudly.   
Hard? Really how could she ever find something hard? She was a Phantom Troupe member, one of the spiders! This exam was nothing compared to the other things she had done in the past. She smiled as she thought of the massacres they had caused. What was she thinking? Why would she ever want to leave? It was a stupid thought that had crossed her mind one too many times.   
Akari was so lost in her train of thought she didn’t even realize she was still laughing. She was being excessive and she knew that but, it had been a while since she had thought things like that. Maybe being away from the main scene of the Phantom Troupe for so long had made her soft.   
It was then that Akari finally spotted green land ahead of her.   
“Thank the gods for that,” she said aloud to herself. It had felt like five minutes and an eternity since she had left Meteor City.   
The greenery that lay ahead of her was such an abrupt change from the sand that it felt artificial, it was almost like an invisible line had drawn there, separating the ‘scum’ of Meteor City from the rest of the world.   
Akari stepped onto the grass and made her way into the woods, if she had paid a bit more attention to her surroundings she would have noticed the creature to her right who was getting ready to pounce on her at any given moment. This was no ordinary creature of course, in fact it was probably there to assess her.  
The exam has already begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to anyone that reads!


	3. The Look In Her Eyes

Akari is usually perfectly fine when it comes to situations like this, but she was rusty. Her time in Meteor City had not been well spent, in fact she did barely anything. Akari had needed an escape, even if it was just a short week and a half. That amount of time was enough to make her fighting skills go down in the ranks significantly, to her sheer disappointment.   
She only had a couple of seconds to gather information on what the creature in front of her was, but it was enough to get an idea of how to counter the attack coming her way. Her eyes scattered all over its body, looking for weak points.   
It was an extremely strange looking...animal? Akari was unsure of what to categorise it as in the moment. It essentially looked like a giant lizard, but with scales covering its entire body. Before the giant lizard itself decided to attack Akari, she also noticed the wings that seemed to be tucked into its sides. As if it couldn’t look any uglier, Akari thought.   
The mere seconds that had seemed like hours finally passed and Akari pulled her katana from its sheath. The creature first attacked with its teeth, opening its large mouth and tilting its head to the side, attempting to bite Akari.  
Akari quickly jumped back avoiding the bite and shouting a bout of curses in the process.   
Fighting this thing would be hard, extremely large and sharp teeth belonging to an even bigger creature didn’t go very well together with a katana. The only option that came to mind was to retreat.   
The creature started to pace from right to left in front of her now, either marking its territory or daring her to try and attack.   
Still holding her katana in a defensive stance, Akari turned and ran deeper into the forest.   
Akari thought to herself that most people in this situation think themselves a coward for running away. Thoughts that they were useless or if they were good enough to be a hunter would cross their minds. But, Akari didn’t care. She took no care in all that stuff, a mindset like that reminded her of a main character in some of the books she used to find and read when she was younger. Books that were scattered across Meteor City, books filled with tales of heroes who would always fight until their last breath and would never run away from a fight. Akari had never liked that kind of stuff, who’s to say that all heroes have that kind of mindset? It annoyed her more than anything else.   
That could be partly the reason why she felt no regret in running away from a fight that could be simple, if she just thought of a logical method to fight the lizard.   
It was then that she heard a flapping sound coming from above her as she continued running through the forest.   
Oh yeah, she had forgotten about the wings.   
The creature flew down and grabbed Akari’s shoulders with its front claws, scratching and tearing at her jacket. Akari yelled a string of curses before stabbing her katana into the lizard’s front right leg. The lizard cried out and flew up to escape Akari’s next stab as she turned around to face the lizard.   
Akari smirked as she saw the lizard writhing in pain from its stab wound and she slipped into a fighting stance ready to face the creature as, clearly running away didn’t work. The sudden yelling from behind her caught Akari off guard, was there another one?   
Thankfully, there was not another lizard but what her eyes met was even worse than another lizard to Akari. A young girl in distress, most likely from the lizard of course but that didn’t help the situation.   
The girl was high up in a tree, cowering in fear and staring at the lizard with wide eyes. She was wearing a simple white dress and had nothing to protect herself, in the middle of the woods? Had she been there the whole time?, Akari thought.   
The girl in the tree had tears pouring down her cheeks. As if this situation isn’t bad enough, now I have a crying girl to distract me, Akari thought.   
It was then that it clicked with Akari, the lizard had been writhing in pain for far too long at this point for a creature of its stature and size. It’s endurance was clearly terrible, meaning it wasn’t much of a fighter, even though it’s first response to seeing a person was to attack. Plus the girl in the tree was all too convenient, what would any kind of person be doing in the middle of the woods if those kinds of creatures were hanging around, creatures hanging around places like this weren’t exactly common but not other worldly.   
Surely the exam hadn’t already started? What kind of a joke was this?  
During Akari’s train of thought, the lizard had finally stopped wailing and seemed out for revenge against her, he seemed to be getting ready to attack. It didn’t notice the girl in the tree yet, all too convenient again.   
Akari sighed, cleared her throat and pointed her katana up at the girl,  
“Oi, tree girl. Why don’t you stop crying and yelling and get down here and make yourself useful? You were stupid enough to come in here in the first place, you could at least help a stuggling citizen, no?”. Akari knew all too well that that was what she was supposed to be doing.  
The girl clearly bit back a gasp after hearing Akari’s rude words but replied none the less, “Eh of course, I’ll do my best to help right away!” she said in an all too enthusiastic tone. She climbed down from the tree as if the fear had left her completely. Akari almost laughed, these examiners were too obvious. If this was the standard now the main exam would be all too easy.   
The girl reached the ground at the same time that the lizard reached Akari, bearing its teeth and letting out a roar.   
The girl screamed and backed into the tree throwing her hands in front of her face. Akari smirked and threw her katana aside, she grabbed the lizard’s jaw and the area right above its top row of teeth and started to forcefully open its mouth, attempting to break it open entirely.   
The lizard cried out in pain as the sides of its mouth were ripped open by Akari’s strong hands. The girl by the tree dropped her arms to her sides as she stared in shock. She saw that Akari had a concentrated look on her face, completely focused on taking out the lizard. But she could also see the glimmer of something in her purple eyes, it was a look she could not comprehend in that present moment but later on she would realise that it seemed like a look of enjoyment. Whatever the look meant it didn’t matter, she needed to stop her attack before things went even further south.  
“S-Stop! Please stop it!” were the words that came out of the girls mouth. Akari stopped quickly, loosening her grip on the lizard's mouth and dropping her arms to her sides. She smiled and turned to face the girl,   
“I was waiting for you to say that”. It was a simple sentence but it shook the Ichika to her core. She had been assigned this work as a hunter, to simply examine people who were from this area who were also heading to the Hunter exam. She arrived in this area along with her lizard, her means of transport and essentially her pet and friend. Ichika had expected no one, as she knew the closest place was Meteor City but she was informed that there was one applicant from there this year, Akari Kita.   
To put it all too simply, she had not expected Akari to be like this. She could not have been older than fourteen. When Ichika had seen her arrive at the woods, when she had sent her lizard to go after her she had thought that she looked cute almost. With her plaits and purple hair, she hadn’t looked all too intimidating other than the katana strapped to her side, but most people have some line of defence on them nowadays. It wasn’t uncommon for people to carry around weapons.   
“Well are you just gonna stand there and gape at me or are you gonna tell me how to get to the Hunter exam, tree girl?”. Ichika was snapped out of her train of thought and finally looked Akari in the eyes.   
Her eyes were so pretty, beautiful even. The purple seemed to swirl as Ichika stared into them. But it was too much. There was too much going on in Akari’s eyes for Ichika to understand. There must of been a thousand different feelings circling in those purple eyes, anger, hatred, excitement, indifference, anguish, Ichika felt overwhelmed by it so much so that she felt sick, she had to leave to get away to-  
“Guess I’ll find it myself, tree girl since you’re being no help at all. Okay! I’m off!” Akari picked up her katana and slipped it back into its sheath, and while not taking a single glance at the lizard or the Ichika she started on her way.   
It was then that Ichika snapped back to reality,   
“Wow, you actually figured it out. If I’m honest I thought I was doing pretty well with the act”, Ichika laughed nervously and she scratched the back of her head.   
Akari stopped in her tracks,  
“Oh it was pretty good I just usually don’t fall for acts of stupidity like that. If it had been a genuine case of someone actually being in distress, I would’ve ignored them or killed them out of annoyance. I saw through your act nearly the minute I saw you, silly”, Ichika let out a gasp as Akari tapped her right index finger against Ichika’s nose while laughing.   
Ichika hadn’t felt this small in a while. It had been a while since a teenage girl had talked down to her. Them Ichika remembered her lizard.   
She turned away from Akari and ran towards him, praying he was okay. How would she tell her superiors about this? He was whining in pain as she approached him, the sides of his mouth were ripped and bleeding but it wasn’t life threatening.   
“Oh, I am sorry about the lizard. Is it yours? I do hope not because I can’t imagine keeping a weak and ugly thing like that as your pet” Akari said while laughing. Ichika bit her lip to keep the hoard of insults she had conjured in her head from spilling out her mouth.   
“Thankfully, the injuries you inflicted weren’t life threatening and he can recover. So we can fly to the hunter exam location”.   
“Oh? Really? That thing is going to be my transport? It’s a good thing I didn’t rip off its wings, what were you thinking let it attack me? If I had done that we would be stuck here and would have to go a while for the next means of transport? Gods you’re about as dumb as your counterpart”.   
“Oi, I’m your superior you understand? This was the first test of the Hunter exam for you and you did…..well I suppose in the fighting section but you can’t go running your mouth to the person who complied in this test that was entirely for your benefit!” Ichika was so angry that she ran out of breath at the end of her sentence.   
“Aha, good attempt to argue with me but I honestly don’t care. Superiority doesn’t matter in this world to me plus as you said this is for my benefit so hurry up and let’s get going to my exam”, Akari’s air of sarcasm had faded half way through the sentence and she sounded angry, angry enough to make Ichika hop on her lizard and quickly usher Akari to follow suit.   
“Alright, that’s better. How long will this take, tree girl?”, Akari said from behind Ichika. Ichika winced at the nickname that Akari had seemed to stick with or her but didn’t address it, she was never good at fighting back anyway and Akari honestly scared her a little.   
“Only around twenty minutes if my lizard is at top speed but he could be a little slower because of his injury-“  
“Well make him fly at top speed. You think I care about an injury? Especially if I’m the one who inflicted it”  
“Okay, I got it”. Ichika slapped her lizard's side and they were quickly up in the air flying towards the area of the Hunter exam.   
As they flew through the sky, Ichika decided that she never wanted to cross paths with Akari Kita ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to anyone that reads!!

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone actually finds and reads this, thank you! My writing isn't the best but I've wanted to write a fic like this for a while. I'm still not sure how long this is going to be yet, but I have the majority of things planned out.   
> This will probably be updated pretty irregularly but I will try to make it consistent.


End file.
